Lunenburg — Planned Town & Atlantic Fishery
Blockhouse Hill — Reading the Grid
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
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Transcript
Start high so the plan makes sense.
Lunenburg was laid out in 1753 according to a rectangular British colonial model. Streets and blocks were imposed across a steep peninsula rather than carefully following the contours.
UNESCO considers the survival of that plan one of the town's defining features.
The settlement formed part of Britain's effort to strengthen colonial control in Nova Scotia after Halifax was founded in 1749.
Many early settlers were German-speaking Protestants recruited from Europe.
The grid looks orderly from above. Life inside it was not. Settlers faced supply problems, political tension and conflict with Mi'kmaq and Acadian communities in a region Britain had not securely controlled.
Planned towns are diagrams of government ambition.
The fact that Lunenburg's diagram survives so clearly is extraordinary. The fact that people managed to live on these hills despite the diagram is equally impressive.